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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24700948">Lung Capacity</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/downjune/pseuds/downjune'>downjune</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Black Panther (2018), Marvel Cinematic Universe</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Consent Issues, Cousin Incest, Institutional Racism, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 09:42:16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>12,406</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24700948</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/downjune/pseuds/downjune</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>or Ready For a War (Again)</p><p> </p><p>“If you agree to it,” T’Challa said, “we will heal you completely and you will join the royal family.”</p><p>Erik wheezed a laugh before he could stop himself. “You’re outta your fuckin’ mind.”</p><p>“I’m not finished.” T’Challa said it sharply. He said it like a king. “If you agree, you will join the royal family as my consort. My responsibility.”</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Erik Killmonger/T'Challa</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>189</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Heat Fic Summer 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yen/gifts">Yen</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Happy Heat Fic Summer, Yen! I was so happy to get to write in this fandom.</p><p>I huge thank you to Seinmit for reading this over for me! Your comments were just the kick in the pants this story needed.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He came around with his hands locked at his cousin’s throat. Even only half-conscious, Erik wanted to throttle him. He grinned up at T’Challa from his bed, but T’Challa only blinked back at him. A spear point at Erik’s throat let him know who else had accompanied the king to this little corner of the hospital. </p><p>Erik had awoken here once already, groggy and alone and down the use of one lung, which, given the capabilities of Wakandan medicine, indicated to him they’d deliberately left him weakened. He’d rested uneasily since. Not that he ever rested easily. </p><p>Flexing his hands around his cousin’s neck, he thought that at least his grip strength was still decent. Except that—T’Challa didn’t look all that gripped. He reached up and peeled Erik’s hands away like Erik had never taken the Heart-Shaped herb. Like they’d given him the antidote while he was out.</p><p>The king seated himself on the bed by Erik’s side like this was just some family chat, so Erik finally spoke.</p><p>“What’s good, cousin?” He wouldn’t give T’Challa the satisfaction of his real question. <i>What the fuck am I doin’ here?</i></p><p>T’Challa folded his hands together and rested them on his thigh. He was dressed in his throne-room robe, like he’d just come from speaking to his advisors. “You are a prince of Wakanda,” he said, and he’d either anticipated Erik’s silent question or practiced what he was going to say before Erik woke up. He’d put money on the second one. “And you made a successful claim to the throne.” </p><p>Erik searched his cousin’s face but could find nothing more than watchfulness, like T’Challa could get everything on Erik he needed just by looking hard enough. And maybe he could—Erik wasn’t all that complicated.</p><p>“Yeah, I am. And yeah, I did,” he eventually answered. For all the good it’d done him.</p><p>T’Challa gave a short nod and frowned, a brief expression followed by a short inhale.</p><p>Erik was about to hear some bullshit.</p><p>“What happened to you was wrong,” T’Challa said, voice measured. “My father never should have left you there, even if your father was—”</p><p>“Don’t talk to me about my father. <i>Ever</i>.” Erik’s blood pounded in his ears, and if he’d been standing, he probably would have fallen on his ass. His skin looked gray beneath the brown, and he could barely catch his breath. </p><p>T’Challa’s mouth tightened, but he just nodded again. “What happened to you was wrong, and I must try to make it right. That is why I brought you back here, why I could not let you die.”</p><p>Erik tried to access the fury he should be feeling in that moment, at the acknowledgement of the complete disrespect T’Challa had shown him, but he was trying too hard not to pass out. That his cousin had saved his life against his express request was a grudge he could carry. Add it to the list. Just now, he was too tired—and curious—to fight about it.</p><p>“Okay, how you gonna do that?” he asked. “How does keepin’ me here, weak as fuck, make anything right?”</p><p>T’Challa glanced up at the Dora with the spear point and nodded. The woman thumped it on the floor and backed up far enough to give them the illusion of privacy, though not before she’d shot him a look of pure loathing. He flashed her a quick grin. Nobody wanted to put him behind a closed door here. That, or no medical facility in Wakanda had doors. </p><p>Erik was a little surprised the head bitch hadn’t come with for this little chat. If he had to guess, it was because she would’ve killed him on sight. All the more reason to track her down later.</p><p>T’Challa cleared his throat, and Erik blinked back to his more immediate problem. </p><p>“If you agree to it,” T’Challa said, “we will heal you completely and you will join the royal family.”</p><p>Erik wheezed a laugh before he could stop himself. “You’re outta your fuckin’ mind.”</p><p>“I’m not finished.” T’Challa said it sharply. He said it like a king. </p><p>Erik let his anger comfort and warm him, though the heat was as much an illusion as their privacy. His toes were fucking freezing. He gestured for T’Challa to finish and said with as much sarcasm as he could scrape together. “Apologies, Highness.”</p><p>“If you agree, you will join the royal family as my consort. My responsibility.”</p><p>Erik’s mouth dropped open, his eyebrows shot up, and he smiled in disbelief. “Shit.” His cousin’s expression twitched like he was thinking the same thing. “For real? What happened to ya girl? Nakia, right? I liked her.” He said this with a leer in his voice, but T’Challa only looked away. </p><p>“That is not your concern.”</p><p>“It is if we’re gonna be fucking.” He was gratified to see T’Challa’s quick look of deep annoyance. Erik hadn’t grown up knowing all the ins and outs, so to speak, of Wakandan royalty, but he had a damn good guess. “That’s what this is about, isn’t it? You’ve got a guilty conscience, but the only way you’re gonna let me near the throne again is if I’m your bitch.”</p><p>“That is not how it works,” T’Challa said, avoiding Erik’s eyes again. </p><p>“Then enlighten me.”</p><p>“That is not <i>exactly</i> how it works,” T’Challa revised. “But you will not understand the difference until you do.”</p><p>“Until I do what?”</p><p>“Until you do understand.” T’Challa’s mouth twitched, that royal smugness lurking in his expression—adding more fuel to what lay smoldering in Erik’s belly. His plans may have been shot to hell, but he’d rallied the Border Tribe around him once, and here T’Challa was, inviting him back in. He could play the long game. He’d been playing it since he was about twelve years old. </p><p>Maybe it was that twelve-year-old who’d gotten him in over his head. Too much blind fury and old grief. This was T’Challa’s land and people, after all. But Erik had more than a twelve-year-old’s rage to draw from.</p><p>“And you’re gonna show me—is that it?” he said, doing nothing to disguise the mockery in his voice. </p><p>“I am going to give you a chance at the life you should have had. If we are agreed, you and I will take the Heart-Shaped herb together and bind ourselves as King and Consort.”</p><p>“And if I don’t?” </p><p>“You can seek the mercy of one of the five tribes. You may find someone in the Border Tribe who will—”</p><p>“Nah, I’m just fuckin’ with you. Of course I’m in. What the fuck else am I gonna do?” He grinned as something complicated flickered across his cousin’s face. Dread and anticipation, both. Erik stared him down, and not a single torture device or threat in the world could have made him admit the same.</p><p>*</p><p>“You have this ritual in California, yes?” T’Challa stripped out of his shirt and folded it without looking over at Erik. </p><p>Erik paced the king’s rooms, restless energy driving him almost to bounce on the balls of his feet. He breathed deep and felt both lungs expand, healthy and new. “Yeah,” he answered. ‘Y’all didn’t invent heat fucking.” Pretty much everybody was wired for it—you just needed a little push. Usually the chemical kind. In this case, ground-up Herb seeds, brewed to something that tasted like vibranium and dirty rain runoff. </p><p>“Coulda sworn I had all that shit burned,” he said, half to himself.</p><p>“Yes, well, we have generations of seeds stored, and you missed those.” </p><p>When Erik turned, he found T’Challa with a straight face, but only just. <i>I’ll make sure to get’em next time,</i> he managed to not say, though he expected T’Challa could see it all over his face. However they’d brewed the Herb seeds was definitely fucking with his head already. He felt—it was like the floor had tilted, and the only place he could go was down, toward T’Challa standing by the bed.</p><p>“Have you ever…?” T’Challa began. And fuck, he actually looked nervous. Erik could work with that.</p><p>“’Course,” he answered easily. “Never bonded, though. Not really my style.” He watched T’Challa carefully. “You, though. I’m guessing his Royal Majesty has never pushed a heat. Couldn’t risk an accidental bond.” He grinned and crossed his arms over his chest, leaning back on his heels to keep himself from tipping toward the bed.</p><p>“That is correct,” T’Challa answered stiffly. </p><p>“Your girl, she likes her freedom, huh?” He flexed his arms a little and noted the way it drew T’Challa's eye.</p><p>“Nakia is a War Dog, and there is no one better for the job. She cannot be bound to me, and I would never ask it of her.” He took a breath. “So she is not my girl.” He frowned, gaze turning inward, and Erik offered him a smile with teeth. </p><p>“Heat makes you honest, just a heads up. It’s a trip.”</p><p>“Then tell me something true.” He looked at Erik with eyes that grew hungrier by the second. Erik took a step toward him, and the heat rose in his blood, like turning up a burner on the stove. He pealed his shirt off and dropped it on the floor. T’Challa’s eyes caught and dragged over his scars. </p><p>“I’m never gonna forgive you.” He took another step closer, and T’Challa’s nostrils flared as he inhaled sharply. </p><p>“I know,” he said. “But I have always been an optimist.” He stepped toward Eric, met him in the middle of the room, and reached for him first.</p><p>Erik sucked in a harsh, reflexive breath the moment T’Challa’s fingers wrapped around the back of his neck, but Erik kissed him first, jerking him in with a hand wrapped in the waist of his pants. He bit at T’Challa’s lips, catching them between his incisors and pinching just this side of too hard. T’Challa grunted and dug in his nails, tugging Erik flush against him, chest to chest, cock to cock. </p><p>Then he pulled back just enough to regard Erik for a moment, and they hadn’t been this close since trying to murder each other. It was confusing enough that they both froze. Erik thought about reaching for his throat, but the seeds of the Heart-Shaped herb didn’t have the same effect as the flower. T’Challa was stronger. Still, he could do it. No better way to get a guy off his guard than to fuck him. </p><p>“Are you going to kill me, cousin?” T’Challa asked quietly. “Give me your honesty.” </p><p>The heat had ratcheted up another few notches now that they were touching, and Erik’s focus had narrowed to T’Challa’s body under his hands. Violence and sex balanced like a coin on its end, both visible, indistinguishable when it spun. </p><p>Erik wanted—he wanted what he always did. He wanted <i>inside</i>.</p><p>He shook his head. “Nah, not this time.”</p><p>T’Challa smiled, and there was nothing smug about it. The brightness of it twisted in Erik’s gut, and with a quick motion, he hooked his cousin’s ankle and shoved him backward to the bed. That smile didn’t fade, and Erik got the impression T’Challa went down willingly. Erik followed him, climbed over him on the bed and knelt on his outstretched arms. </p><p>“Gonna fuck you up, though.”</p><p>T’Challa’s hands flexed into fists against the strength in Erik’s legs. He could throw Erik off without much trouble—his own legs were free—but he didn’t. So Erik dropped to his hands over him, spread his knees wider and lowered himself so the shape of his dick rested right at T’Challa’s mouth, obvious through the soft black fabric of his pants. </p><p>T’Challa’s eyes slipped shut as he nuzzled in, inhaling deeply. His mouth opened, and Erik watched him mouth at the length of him, already blissed on the heat. That’s what they were for, after all. That’s what this was for—the clearest path forward to what Erik wanted. </p><p>He made a rough noise in his throat and shifted back, off T’Challa’s arms and down the length of his body. He couldn’t make himself meet T’Challa’s eyes, so he told himself he just didn’t want to and reached instead for his hip. “Over,” he said. “On your front.”</p><p>T’Challa went easily, trustingly, and was it the heat that made him this stupid, or did he know something Erik didn’t? Looking down at the smooth expanse of his back, muscle rolling beneath brown skin, Erik doubted himself. Maybe it was making him just as stupid. </p><p>With a grunt, he curled his fingers in the fabric at T’Challa’s waist and stripped him the rest of the way. He stared for a long second at the perfect swell of his ass before be swallowed, dry-mouthed and said, “You got anything for me to glove up with?”</p><p>Pressing to one elbow, T’Challa looked back over his shoulder. “You were tested when we healed you, and so was I. We are both clear. This should help to bind us.”</p><p>Erik didn’t ever do this bare and the thought of fucking his cousin with nothing but skin between them twisted in him again. He nodded, head dropping low between his shoulders.</p><p>“If you’re not comfortable—”</p><p>“It’s fine,” he cut in and shoved T’Challa’s legs apart as he knelt between them. Grabbing him by the hips, he tugged until T’Challa pushed up to his knees and sat back in his lap.</p><p>“There is—”</p><p>“Yeah, I got it.” He’d spotted the oil by the bed as soon as they’d entered the room and he reached for it now. The temptation to grab T’Challa and go at him raw came and left in a hot wave. If he was going to get anywhere, he couldn’t do it having given the king a bad fuck. If they were gonna have any chance at binding, they both had to be into it.</p><p>Erik made a face at T’Challa’s back and huffed a laugh to himself. He’d given years of his life to the US Military in exchange for the ruthlessness to destabilize entire governments, and failed. Turned out all he needed he’d learned after basketball games, lifting girls against chipped-paint lockers.</p><p>T’Challa’s skin burned beneath his as he slid oil-slicked fingers into his body, and then quickly—too quick—his dick. T’Challa’s spine curved away from him as he breathed out and relaxed, like he’d done this plenty of times and knew just how to take it. His fingers clenched in the blanket, and Erik bit back a groan.</p><p>Bottoming out in him sent a rush like no other to the edges of Erik’s awareness, sparking across his skin, tightening his balls, and lighting up the base of his skull. He wrapped one arm around T’Challa’s middle and pressed his forehead between his shoulder blades, slick with heat-sweat. With his other hand, he cupped T’Challa’s cock tight against his lower abdomen and fucked into him to jerk him off.</p><p>At the sound of T’Challa’s voice, rough and sharp all at once, Erik bit possessively at the wing of his shoulder blade, getting skin, muscle, and the hard edge of bone between his teeth. He sucked a bruise there and said, “You always this easy, Majesty?”</p><p>From his knees, T’Challa actually laughed. He reached up to hook Erik again by the back of the neck and draw him down, this time to bite at the join of his shoulder and neck. He didn’t answer—except to shiver in Erik’s grip and thrust into his palm, starting to come.</p><p>The feel of it tugged at him, and Erik fucked in twice more and stilled, breathing into an orgasm that threatened to wring him out. Time was, heats were supposed to guarantee conception, but these days in the “civilized” world, most people had that shit locked down. Most people did it for the thrill of an intense fuck. Some got off on the possibility of a bond. Erik gripped his cousin tight and thought, <i>come on, come on, let me in, let me in, let me in</i>. The words pulsed in time with the drawn-out contractions of his orgasm, and T’Challa’s voice seemed to echo them until the force of it dropped them both to the bed, T’Challa flat underneath him and grinding against the mattress. </p><p>Erik rolled to the side, just enough to shift some of his weight off, but pulled T’Challa with him. He tried to dig his fingers into his hair but it was too short to get a good grip, curled tightly against his scalp. They stayed snugged together tight, though, T’Challa closing his hand over Erik’s where it still rested against his stomach.</p><p>“Not bad,” he said thoughtfully.</p><p>Erik huffed in disbelief and reached down to squeeze T’Challa’s cock where is sat, wet and still hard as nails against his thigh. Without a word, he rolled onto his back, and pulled T’Challa with him so he lay facing the ceiling, Erik still buried in him. Whatever release that first orgasm brought gave way to the next wave of heat as he grabbed the backs of T’Challa’s knees and held him open, planted his feet on the bed, and fucked up into him. </p><p>“Gonna be a long night, cousin,” he grunted in T’Challa’s ear. </p><p>T’Challa’s head rolled against his shoulder as Erik’s rhythm punched a rough sound from his throat, but his grip on the back of Erik’s head was like iron.</p><p>*</p><p>Erik didn’t stir when T’Challa left. He jolted awake to an empty room, and with no windows, he didn’t have a clue what time it was. The heat must have knocked out his internal clock as well as his unconscious sense of his surroundings. </p><p>He should have woken up when T’Challa left. Jesus, what was this, amateur hour? Managing not to wince at the soreness in his hips and the ache in his balls, he pushed off the bed and stepped into his clothes from the day before. The silence of the room pressed on his ears and reinforced the only conclusion to be drawn—he was alone, so he and T’Challa hadn’t managed to bond during heat.</p><p>“Fuck,” he said to the empty room.</p><p>He shouldn’t be surprised. He’d never had trouble connecting with people, always had plenty of friends in school, through basic, and throughout his deployments, but they were all transactional. All in service of his revenge. His mission.</p><p>Or at least they seemed like it in retrospect. He’d come to see the lives he took as a tool to carve him into something perfectly honed for one task, so every relationship had come to look a certain kind of way.</p><p>T’Challa had offered him this way in, to exactly what he wanted, but maybe he’d known it was impossible for someone like Erik to bind himself to anyone—let alone the person all his vengeance was focused upon. Was he setting Erik up for failure? To justify kicking him out of the palace when they couldn’t bond?</p><p>“No.” He shook his head. T’Challa wanted to <i>make it right</i>, and whatever that meant to his naïve, fool of a cousin, it wasn’t casting Erik out. If he’d wanted Erik dead, all he’d had to do was let him bleed out.</p><p>He should have known T’Challa hadn’t left him entirely alone here. As he pushed open the door to the bedroom, he found the Dora Milaje Head Bitch herself posted just outside. She slid him a sidelong glare as he emerged, though her posture didn’t change. She held her spear in a grip that told him she was ready to put it between his ribs. </p><p>“’Sup?” he said, then cleared his throat. He rubbed the back of his head and smiled sleepily at her.</p><p>She didn’t buy it for a second, so he quit smiling.</p><p>“Where’s your king?” he asked instead.</p><p>“In a meeting you are not permitted to attend,” she answered.</p><p>“I see.” Erik nodded. “So why you ain’t there? You like bein’ my bodyguard that much? I’m flattered.”</p><p>She bared her teeth at him. “I asked to remain here so that I could tell you this—I know exactly what you are and what you are doing.”</p><p>“Oh yeah?” Erik bared his right back. “If you’re tellin’ me that, I’m guessing you already told your king and he’s choosing not to listen.”</p><p>Her brows bunched closer together. “I will not let you take the throne a second time.”</p><p>Erik laughed from his belly. She’d walked right into that one. “Oh, man, I took the throne all night last night. He’ll be sittin’ funny for days—I don’t know how he’s makin’ it through that meeting right now, honestly.”</p><p>The spear pricked him under the chin and he tipped his head back, the blade giving him a damn good shave. “But I do know he’s gonna be pissed if you touch his consort.”</p><p>She gave him a smug look that reminded Erik a little of T’Challa, and he wondered who had learned it from who. “You’re not yet. And until you are, I will <i>touch</i> you how I please.” The spear slipped downward, pressed right where T’Challa had stabbed him and he’d nearly bled out. He’d wanted to bleed out. </p><p>He’d wanted to find Okoye when he’d awoken in that hospital because he knew she’d finish the job. She was still furious for the way he’d forced her loyalty. He could have her fury right now, if he wanted. If the prospect of the long game was too fucking exhausting and resting, seeing his father again sounded better to him. </p><p>Didn’t sound half-bad right now.</p><p>“Lemme get some shoes on, and we can do this officially, anytime you want,” he said. </p><p>Her lip curled as she regarded him and, after another moment, withdrew her spear. She looked like she had more to say but thought better of it, or thought he wasn’t worth it, and walked away instead. </p><p>He watched her go for a few seconds, then rubbed a hand over that old sucking chest wound. Not so old, just erased, mostly. His ribs still ached, and there were times, even after he’d agreed to this deal with T’Challa and they’d fixed up his lung, that he still couldn’t catch his breath. He’d been alone in his vengeance for so long, yet he’d never felt more isolated than waking up here after he’d thought he was finished.</p><p>Anger, warm and comforting in its familiarity, rushed up from his chest. T’Challa’d had no right to bring him into this. To steal Erik’s death from him after stealing his vengeance, too. And he was going to pay for it.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>*</p><p>T’Challa left him out of most of his kingly responsibilities, Erik thought for obvious reasons. The five tribes had all witnessed what Erik accomplished, seen how vulnerable T’Challa was to him, and yet here Erik was, warming the king’s bed. Or so they probably thought. Since their first attempt at binding had failed, T’Challa had not approached him to try again. He’d hardly approached Erik at all. He doubtless wanted to project his sovereignty and keep Erik in the bedroom.</p><p>So when he was summoned to the throne room, he couldn’t help the anticipation or the knot that tightened in his stomach at the prospect of seeing his cousin for real. A delayed morning after was still a morning after.</p><p>He found the throne room empty except for T’Challa and Okoye. The War Dog, Nakia, appeared as a holographic projection from a vibranium bracelet on Okoye’s wrist. Erik thought, with a spiteful twist in his gut, that he’d never known a dude with so many women in his life he wasn’t fucking.</p><p>“Y’all start without me?” he said by way of greeting, holding his head high and skating his gaze over the throne. It sat empty, T’Challa pacing around the dais in the middle of the room. Before the end of whatever this was, Erik was probably going to sit in it.</p><p>“Thank you for joining us.” T’Challa met his eyes briefly before looking away. “I wanted your opinion on these matters before bringing them to the full Tribal Council.”</p><p>Okoye exhaled noisily through her nose, which told Erik everything he needed to know about her feelings on that. “What matters?” Erik asked, surprised T’Challa wanted his opinion on anything.</p><p>T’Challa cleared his throat and folded his hands behind his back. “It is time for us to open our doors to the world and offer what assistance we have—as you said, to those who look like us but are not as comfortable.”</p><p>“Hey man, you know what I wanted,” Erik said with a shrug. “That should still be Plan A, s’far as I’m concerned. Majesty.”</p><p>Okoye made another sound of disgust. T’Challa shot him a look. “We are not declaring war on the rest of the world in the name of helping our brothers and sisters.”</p><p>Erik smirked and stepped up onto the dais. “Yeah, all right. How much you wanna bet the rest of the world’s still gonna see it that way, no matter what you say?”</p><p>“What do you mean?” T’Challa asked.</p><p>“You do something for Black people, white people gonna say they want theirs. You lift up Black people, white people gonna cry injustice. They gonna retaliate.”</p><p>From the corner of his eye, he caught movement and turned to see Nakia’s projected image regarding him. “He is not wrong,” she said. </p><p>He gestured loosely to her and looked at T’Challa. “Your War Dog knows what’s up,” he said. “Why don’t you?”</p><p>Okoye shot him a murderous look he couldn’t help grinning back at. “You do not speak to your—”</p><p>“Okoye,” T’Challa interrupted. “The answer cannot be an arms race,” he said to Erik.</p><p>“I dunno.” He locked eyes with T’Challa for the first time in days, and a weird thrill rose up his spine. He disguised his shiver as a shrug. “You want a de-escalation of gun violence in America, try givin’ a bunch of brothers some Wakandan weapons, and there’ll be gun registration laws on the books by Christmas. Read your history books, cousin.”</p><p>“We are not giving anyone guns,” T’Challa said, as though he shouldn’t have to say it.</p><p>“Well that was my one idea, so I’m not sure why else you’d invite me here.”</p><p>T’Challa’s mouth twitched in what might have been a smile had the other two not been here. The spike of annoyance Erik felt at that annoyed him even more.</p><p>Because of course it wasn’t his only idea. But damned if being in this fucked up non-arrangement with T’Challa meant he had to school him on the frustrations and failures of Black activism over the years.</p><p>“The reason I invited you here,” T’Challa said, “is because I want to begin one phase of our outreach in California. In Oakland. I want to build a cultural center, offer daycare and after-school programs, public health resources, those kinds of things.” He hesitated, but when Erik didn’t offer anything, he asked, “What do you think?”</p><p>Erik didn’t trust himself to speak. He clenched his fists and relaxed them when he felt all eyes on him. This was supposed to be some kind of gesture—he could see that. Probably something stupid like a wedding present to his consort. A peace offering. A consolation prize.</p><p>Erik hated it. The thought of T’Challa going through the proper bureaucratic channels to level a city block for a cultural center—probably over the very high-rise Erik grew up in—spiked his heartrate. If he could have spewed fire to release the heat in his chest he would have.</p><p>“What do I think?” he echoed.</p><p>He thought… he thought that city was his. It had raised him when Wakanda had murdered his father and left him alone. It had fostered him until he made it all the way to the Naval Academy and MIT. Oakland was the only thing he could still say he loved. Everything he’d done to this point was for Oakland. </p><p>The thought of T’Challa’s well-meaning and ultimately pointless generosity all over it—was not a useful thing to start a fight over right now. But he’d better have something to say about it anyway.</p><p>“So, you want me there for the ribbon-cutting ceremony, is that it?”</p><p>T’Challa’s expression had changed the longer Erik remained silent, and it closed off now. “Perhaps you and I should talk more about this alone.” He turned to Okoye and dismissed her with a tilt of his head. Okoye slid a significant look to the projection of the woman in her hand but didn’t challenge her king. With a warning glance at Erik, and without shutting off the link to Nakia, she left the throne room. He thought he could hear them talking as the door closed behind her.</p><p>Erik waited but T’Challa seemed to be waiting on him to speak. “We really don’t need to talk about it,” he said into the silence. “You’re the king. You’re gonna do what you’re gonna do.” Guys with this much entitlement always did.</p><p>“But if you were still king, this is not what you would do,” T’Challa said.</p><p>“I already showed you what I would do.”</p><p>“And…it does not include public health services or after-school programs?” T’Challa’s brows lifted, as though this was all a fun, light-hearted conversation. As if Erik had never thought about this and didn’t know his own history—exactly how and why the Black Panthers had become so popular in California and why they’d been crushed. </p><p>School lunches and afterschool programs were rearranged patio furniture compared to the bloody fucking housefire needed to burn everything down first.</p><p>Erik wanted to punch him so badly, he could taste the rush of adrenalin it would give him.</p><p>He settled for the next-best thing. “You know, I was thinkin’ we should fuck again. Not push a heat or nothin’, just normal. It might help the next time we try for real.”</p><p>T’Challa’s mouth fell open, and his eyes went big and dark. After a long moment, he said, “You are probably right. What did you have in mind?”</p><p>Erik pushed his anger down, pushed it down until it turned into something else. He glanced over at the throne, then back to T’Challa. “Look me in the eye right now and tell me you don’t know.”</p><p>*</p><p>Damn, but he did love the view from this seat. Even better with the king between his knees, mouth on his dick. Even if his hair was too short to really grab onto, Erik’s fingers fit nicely over his skull, and the noises T’Challa made when Erik scratched his nails over his scalp sent pleasure jolting to the base of his spine. </p><p>And they weren’t talking about that fucking cultural center anymore. So.</p><p>“You’re good at this, Majesty,” he said. “Who you been practicing on?” He felt the barest hint of teeth and then more than a hint, and he jolted at the too-much sensation. </p><p>“Shit, I like that,” he said. Looking down, he found T’Challa staring up at him, an unreadable expression in his eyes. It hadn’t taken much work at all to get the king’s mind off affairs of state. Erik’s training hadn’t branched out in this direction, and the thought of what his old COs would say if they saw him now made him smile. He should have tried the honeypot angle in the field more often. Maybe he’d missed his calling.</p><p>T’Challa had one arm up underneath Erik’s shirt, scratching tracks with his nails down Erik’s back, right to the crease of his ass. His other pressed against Erik’s balls and behind, hinting at something Erik didn’t want to think about and therefore could not stop thinking about—on his knees, kneeling up on the throne, T’Challa behind him, railing him into next week. </p><p>Keeping his head on straight was easier when he didn’t have his dick in a dude’s mouth. This mouth, in particular. </p><p>The throne wasn’t actually all that comfortable a place to sit, but when he pressed against the arms and arched his hips, the sharp ache in his tail bone and elbows was more than worth it as he shot down T’Challa’s throat. His shout echoed beautifully around the throne room.</p><p>He’d barely lowered himself to the seat when T’Challa pressed up from his knees and climbed right onto the throne with him, legs bracketing his. “My turn,” he said before digging his fingers into Erik’s hair, shoving him back, and kissing him.</p><p>Erik stiffened against the hard seat-back of the throne. This was definitely way different from a heat fuck. An entirely different set of instincts kicked in as he shoved T’Challa’s tunic up and tugged at the waist of his pants. Heat was all animal drive. This was a choice, deliberate in the way Erik thought about his kills over the years, precise and purposeful.</p><p>Kneeling over him like this, T’Challa was way taller, and he seemed to like it, spreading his arms across the back of the throne and forcing Erik to tip his head back to kiss him. He tasted himself in T’Challa’s mouth, and the precision and purpose of all this wobbled slightly off-balance. His arms slid the whole way around T’Challa’s waist, and he rested his brow against T’Challa’s collarbone to get his shit together.</p><p>The shape of T’Challa’s dick pressed low on his belly, and he shifted his grip down to grab his ass and encourage T’Challa to grind against him. </p><p>“I don’t have anything to make this nice,” he warned.</p><p>T’Challa huffed that short laugh of his. “I would not expect nice from this.”</p><p>“Just so long as we’re clear.” He spat a couple times onto his fingers and didn’t have time to properly relish how that sounded, echoing in the throne room, before he reached around and pressed the middle two inside. T’Challa hissed and arched roughly against Erik’s front. He kissed Erik hard enough that his head thumped back against the throne and rode his hand like a goddamn champ. And Jesus, it wasn’t like they should draw this out, with those empty Tribal Council seats all around them and fuck knew how many eyes on them already, but Erik could hardly catch his breath.</p><p>He curled his fingers, and he didn’t have much range of motion, but T’Challa groaned. “Be careful,” he said.</p><p>“Yeah? Why?”</p><p>“Because,” and he could hear the smile in T’Challa’s voice. He hadn’t even realized he’d closed his eyes. “Because this is kind of nice.”</p><p>Erik bit whatever skin was closest but only got the shiny fabric of T’Challa’s tunic. He pressed relentlessly up, and T’Challa ground down against him, until with a rough sound in his throat, he stilled and shot all over Erik’s shirt, his breath gusting against Erik’s face in a way he…didn’t hate all that much.</p><p>Fuck, he should’ve taken his shirt off before they got started. Now he’d have to get back to his room with the king’s jizz all over him.</p><p>Probably the best thing for him, honestly. He didn’t know a soul who believed he and the king really wanted anything to do with each other. People were right to worry, of course. It was only T’Challa’s misplaced sense of obligation and generosity driving this train. So Erik leaned up to kiss him, for the benefit of whoever might be watching.</p><p>“All right, now get out of my chair.” T’Challa said it with a smile in his voice and with the expectation that Erik listen to him.</p><p>“Just on my way out,” he said and nearly dumped T’Challa on the floor as he stood. T’Challa grabbed his arm before he could leave, though.</p><p>“I will not do this without your blessing,” he said, then clarified. “California. The Oakland Center. I want it to be for your father, and for you. But if you truly do not wish for—”</p><p>Erik’s throat tightened, so much that he couldn’t spit anything about T’Challa’s right to mention his father, let alone erect something in his honor. Instead he shook his head and jerked his arm free. “It’s fine, cousin.” It wasn’t. “I see what you’re tryna do.” And he hated it. “You want me there, I’ll be there.”</p><p>T’Challa’s face pinched with unhappiness. “I want more than—” He hesitated. “I want more than your presence.”</p><p>Erik knew that. He also knew that in order to get what <i>he</i> wanted, he had to give it. In that moment, though, he felt hollowed out, continuously scraped clean by the anger that burned in him. It kept him hungry and focused, but he didn’t know how sustainable it was. Everything ran out of fuel eventually. There was a point when hunger just made you tired and stupid.</p><p>“I’ll be there,” he said again and walked away. </p><p>*</p><p>It was supposed to be simple, but there was no possible way to make going home simple. Not for Erik, not ever. The Talon Fighter hovered over the old basketball court and a whole bunch of kids looked up at them, displaced air blasting their t-shirts and hair. They shielded their eyes as the jet landed, and Erik’s stomach tightened. Readied for a fight.</p><p>This wasn’t a fight, though, fuck. This was a goddamn photo-opp. No press, sure. But as the belly of the jet opened and the king, the princess, Okoye, and Erik filed out, he knew the score.</p><p>Forgotten basketballs rolled away and clinked against the fence as a dozen kids circled around them.</p><p>“Is that yours?”</p><p>“Holy shit!”</p><p>“Are you guys in the Army?”</p><p>“Come on, if they was in the Army, they’d be in uniform.”</p><p>“Well maybe they’re undercover!”</p><p>“If they was undercover, do you really think they’d be talkin’ to you?”</p><p>They <i>were</i> supposed to talk to these kids—Erik was supposed to talk to them, jesus—and get some ideas about where to build the center. He’d lived sixteen years of his life in this neighborhood. The old high-rise loomed behind him like the biggest fucking Ghost of Christmas Past in history. But this was not how Erik wanted to return home.</p><p>He stood at the back of the pack and wondered if these kids could sense his resentment, how obviously he didn’t belong in this scene. Nobody was in traditional dress, but the Wakandan version of contemporary African urban wear still didn’t look like inner-city Oakland. </p><p>“My name is T’Challa, and this is my sister Shuri. It is a pleasure to meet all of you.” He said it with such…readiness, like he couldn’t wait to talk to these kids and learn all the boring details of their successes and failures. Their hopes and expectations. As much as Erik hated this, he didn’t hate <i>him</i>, and he hated that more than anything.</p><p>Erik wanted what his father wanted—to see their people armed and empowered to fight back, to take back what had been stolen, and more besides. He wanted bloody fucking retribution, and the fact that he was not in a position to bring it about right now—and there could be no more obvious proof of that than this moment here—tipped him over the edge he’d been walking since he’d woken up after his lung surgery. Healed and captive. </p><p>Exactly what he’d have avoided if his plans had ended in death. Death at least was freedom.</p><p>T’Challa hadn’t brought him forward, hadn’t acknowledged he was here, maybe because he didn’t trust Erik with even this. Or maybe he could read a fucking room and knew this was a mistake. </p><p>Whichever it was, Erik saw no path for himself here. So he ran.</p><p>He drifted back as the kids all circled closer around T’Challa, ducked underneath the jet and ran for the fence. He jumped for the top rail, grabbed it and controlled the fall of his weight so that his feet hitting the chain links hardly made a sound as he climbed and vaulted over. </p><p>Landing in a crouch, he shot one quick look over his shoulder, but only a chubby little girl had noticed him. She looked like the type who tagged along with her brothers because she had nothing better to do, not because she liked them, so when he turned and walked away, she said nothing. Once he made it around the corner of the block, he took off.</p><p>He knew this neighborhood like the back of his hand, but in that moment, he didn’t have a fucking clue where he was going or what he was doing. He’d had a plan for everything, and T’Challa had stolen it, like he had everything else. </p><p>The palace of course had plenty of equipment for him to train on, but he hadn’t run like this in months, since before his mission to Wakanda. He stretched out his stride, took a few seconds to admire the way his new shoes supported his feet, and headed for the water.</p><p>It was fucked. He was fucked. What would he achieve as T’Challa’s consort if this was his role—assuming they ever managed to bond? Erik’s bitterness made that possibility seem more remote every day. As did T’Challa’s continued unease with him. What was the point?</p><p>Hopelessness burned in his lungs, and even if they were perfectly healthy and whole, it pressed on him, dragged at him. He hadn’t wanted this. Whatever opportunity T’Challa had presented him, Erik couldn’t stand <i>this</i>.</p><p>He reached Middle Harbor and kept running, even though most of his cover had thinned out as he entered the port. He left that behind too, running until he got to the scrubby park by the bay overlooking San Francisco. When he’d gone as far as he could go without swimming, he stopped, pulse hammering in his ears as he leaned over, hands pressed to his thighs. </p><p>He needed a new plan. He needed time. But what kind of network did he have to draw on now? What bridges hadn’t he burned in pursuit of his goal? By necessity it had been an all-or-nothing gambit. </p><p>He had a few friends left, a few numbers he could call, holes he could crawl into to figure out his next move. He—</p><p>—shouldn’t have come to open ground like this. </p><p>Straightening slowly, he raised his hands in the air and put them on the back of his head. The mechanical sound of rifle safeties clicking off greeted him.</p><p>“Erik Stevens. Please come with us; we’d like to ask you a few questions.”</p><p>Turning around slowly, he found a dozen guys in unmarked body armor—CIA spooks if ever he’d seen them. Hell, took one to know one. Enough had happened since then that it felt like years.</p><p>“You’re in luck,” he said. He grinned. “I was just lookin’ for a ride outta here.”</p><p>*</p><p>They cuffed and escorted him at gunpoint to the van they’d rolled up in and, after they’d thrown a hood over his head, drove him to what he hoped was the local field office and not an empty parking lot for his immediate disposal. This wasn’t the mob, but it wasn’t that far off either. No one would miss him.</p><p>He was marched into an office building that smelled like the 80s, put in an elevator, and dropped a few floors underground, which dimmed his hopes of escape a bit. When he finally arrived “for questioning” and his hood was removed, he found himself in a windowless interrogation room with two spooks at the door and a—thank fuck—projection of the Secretary of State instead of the genuine article.</p><p>“Mr. Secretary,” he said. He would have given a sloppy salute but for the handcuffs. It was probably better that he couldn’t. He’d made a career of it, but taking orders had never suited him. He’d sworn once he’d left his last unit, no white guy was going to tell him how to stand, how to talk, or where to shoot ever again. Especially not this one.</p><p>“Stevens,” Ross said, or more growled. He’d always been puffed up on his own gravitas. Not that Erik knew him well—only by the missions he’d been ordered on. “You’ve been busy.”</p><p>“Yes, sir,” he said with a smirk.</p><p>The projection of Ross shifted his weight, arms folded neatly behind his back. “And stepping foot on American soil after everything you pulled is, what… a bid to return to the fold?”</p><p>Erik made a face of deep skepticism. What a terrible guess. “I wasn’t figurin’ on a warm welcome.” </p><p>“Yes, burned a few bridges on your way out, didn’t you? Murdered a few of your own.”</p><p>“Yeah, that. Just doin’ what y’all taught me.” </p><p> Ross ignored that, which put Erik on edge. “What are Wakandan prisons even like, son?” he asked. </p><p>“Nothin’ like ours,” he answered. </p><p>“Why’d they keep you alive? What’s their angle?”</p><p>Erik hesitated, but he might as well find out where this line of questioning led. T’Challa hadn’t been the one to come after him when he ran. “The king kept me alive because I fought him for the throne and won. And some other shit.”</p><p>“Backward people,” Ross said under his breath. Erik twitched a smile. He hadn’t lived in Wakanda nearly long enough to forget this shit. Rather than look at Ross, he looked down at his feet. Damn, they were nice shoes. He could run for years in these. After he etched another scar on his body for this motherfucker. He wished the dude was actually here, now. “The technology is incredible, though,” Ross continued. “We know that much now—but that’s all we know. You’re his cousin,” Ross said, and Erik wasn’t about to ask how he knew that. The CIA was still good for something, then.</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>“And you have a claim to the throne.”</p><p>“I did,” he answered carefully. </p><p>“We can return you in one piece.”</p><p>“What—” </p><p>“The king wants you back. He was apparently quite worried when he put a call in to one our agents.” </p><p>Erik shut his mouth. His gut sank. </p><p>“If you’ve got T’Challa’s ear, we’d like to know what he’s up to. Showing up today in US airspace, landing on American soil with an agenda he’s doubtless been honing for years.”</p><p>Erik managed not to snort his derision at that. His cousin’s idealism could hardly be considered an agenda.</p><p>“He’s claiming he wants to open a cultural center in Oakland of all places,” Ross said, not even looking at him now, “but I know there’s more to it than that. That’s his foot in the door. That’s where it starts. We’ve got a man on the inside, though.”</p><p>Erik finally looked Ross in the eye, across however many miles separated them. That weight in his lungs threatened to crush him.</p><p>“This is your chance to make things right, son. To serve your country again. Think of all the good you can do.”</p><p>It was an echo of T’Challa’s words that he truly did not appreciate, mostly for the stark line it drew between them. Erik had been an instrument for this government his entire adult life—sometimes blunt, sometimes precise—and even if he’d used every minute of his training and his ops for his own purpose, that fact remained. They’d used him to far greater effect than he’d used them, given how his mission had ended.</p><p>“We’re flying blind with these people. You could be the greatest asset we have,” Ross told him. <i>Or you could spend the rest of your life in prison,</i> went unsaid but hung clearly in the air. “Think about it.”</p><p>“Oh, I’m thinkin’ about it,” Erik said. </p><p>Both T’Challa and Ross wanted him back. Possible routes forward spiraled outward in his mind—each one more exhausting than the last. He’d wanted to use Wakanda to burn all this down, and in the process destroy everything King T’Chaka had tried to protect by denying Erik access to his own people. </p><p>Erik belonged nowhere. He hated and loved Wakanda, and its royal family. His family. It was always going to be a fucking tragedy.</p><p>His shit wasn’t nearly that complicated when it came to the US State Department.</p><p>Ross smirked at him from under his bushy-ass mustache. “Don’t take too long, son. I can lock you away for the rest of your life. Which would be a shame given what you pulled yourself up from.”</p><p>Erik closed his eyes briefly. That calm like just before a kill came over him, his vision, his aim perfectly clear. What he'd pulled himself up from? He was descended from kings.</p><p>“All due respect, I’d rather sit in a prison cell than listen to this for another goddamn second. Sir.”</p><p>He could do more on the inside anyway than out here or rattling around in the palace. Find a new crew. Maybe learn a few things himself. No better pool of applicants. Nobody with less to lose than a bunch of guys in federal lock-up. </p><p>Ross’s face pinched. “That’s a mistake.”</p><p>“I’m done takin’ orders from you.”</p><p>“So, instead you’ll take them from every officer on the Raft.” Ross’s voice rose. “Trust me when I say they’ll enjoy pushing you around. Is that better? Is that what you’d prefer?”</p><p>Erik lifted his chin but didn’t speak. The back of his neck prickled at the prospect of the Raft, off the grid, maximum security, under the fucking ocean. </p><p><i>Bury me in the ocean.</i> </p><p>Fuck it. And fuck Ross. He’d be running the place in a month.</p><p>“Get him out of here,” Ross said, speaking to the spooks at the door. “Wakanda wants him back, but he’s not theirs to take.” Ross looked at him in a way Erik instantly recognized—he was a calculated and justified risk. He was an investment. Erik twitched an ugly smile at him as his escort tossed the hood back over his head, but Ross’s image had already blinked out.</p><p>The journey back out of the office building was rougher than the one in. His guards shoved him along until the light changed through the fiber of the hood and fresh air filtered in. Then he had a moment to anticipate the hit—the crunch of loose gravel on blacktop, and the shift in bodyweight of his closest guard. He ducked instinctively, but the butt of the gun caught him at the hinge of his jaw, and he stumbled sideways. Arms grabbed him and held him upright as one of them spoke right in his ear, close enough that the sound of it vibrated through the hood.</p><p>“Traitors like you don’t even deserve the Raft. You deserve to die the same way you killed every one of your own. With one extra courtesy.”</p><p>“We’ll put a bullet right between your eyes,” another said, “so at least you know exactly who’s taking you out.”</p><p>“The Secretary’s not gonna like that too much,” Erik said, “and y’all are his bitches, so I don’t think you’ve got the balls.”</p><p>“What else were we supposed to do?” the guy holding onto him said. “You tried to escape. We had no choice but to put you down.”</p><p>Erik would never put it past a cop—CIA spook or otherwise—to shoot a brother in the back, so he shut his mouth after that. They loaded him into the van and pulled back out onto the road, putting his fate for the moment in their hands. At least in the CIA parking lot—or wherever the fuck—somebody might know these guys were supposed to keep him alive. Now, all he could do was circle around and around in his head. </p><p>Were they for real about killing him? Did T’Challa actually want to recover him, or did Ross just want him to spill everything first before locking him up?</p><p> If T’Challa did want him back, then he was too valuable to leave floating in the bay. He would actually be missed, and his death could turn into a diplomatic incident. Where the hell were they taking him, anyway? If T’Challa wanted him back, and these guys didn’t actually execute him, how long could they hold him? </p><p>As long as they wanted. He was the wanted fugitive here, foolish enough to return home. No, T’Challa was the fool to bring him, to drag him into something he’d never wanted.</p><p>He wasn’t sure why he even gave a shit. If they were gonna put a bullet in him, he should just take it now and be done. None of this bargaining bullshit. But stupid, unfounded, undeserved loyalty flared at the thought. T’Challa had stolen his death, and when it came right down to it, these were not the assholes he'd take it back from.</p><p>No sooner had he thought this than something or someone landed squarely on the roof of the van with a heavy, metallic bang. Erik smirked inside the hood. “Keep driving,” one of his guards barked, and the vehicle sped up again, but it was too late. They’d just begun to accelerate when the driver shouted, “The fuck is tha—”</p><p>They hit what felt like a brick fucking wall but what Erik suspected was a Wakandan spear stuck in the pavement. Erik flew forward into the seat in front of him, and with his hands cuffed, he could only hunch his shoulder up to protect his head. The van pitched onto it’s nose, and he collided with at least two of his guards, before it settled back on all fours, leaving him in a pile of limbs. </p><p>He took full advantage of the confusion, rolling onto his back and getting his legs wrapped around one guy’s neck in a submission. He started to twist, applied the pressure and leverage that would kill him, but the van door opened. The hood was tugged off his head and somebody solid and strong grabbed him under his arms. </p><p>Craning back as he was hauled out of the van, he could only see a male figure in a black hoodie and a ski mask, but he’d know those eyes anywhere. “Hold still,” were his rough instructions, barely louder than a whisper, but a moment later, back on his feet, his handcuffs came loose, cut cleanly in half. They clinked harmlessly as Erik shook out his arms and squinted in the late-afternoon California sun. </p><p>His rescuers were all dressed in hoodies and ski masks, and Erik experienced an extremely strange throwback to the 90s when he and his friends had played at this kind of shit, before it got real. There were three, one of them with a 9mm, the other two with balls of steel as they waded into the van and neutralized every one of Erik’s escort in extremely close-range combat without a single shot fired. The one with the 9mm, a white dude judging by the color of his eyelids gave them cover, but Erik could see he really, really didn’t want to fire into that van.</p><p>“Get in the car,” the guy said, tense as hell, not taking his eyes off the fight.</p><p>“What car?” Erik looked around but only saw a rusty Explorer with the doors hanging open under an overpass. </p><p>“The king kindly requests you get in <i>that</i> car,” he gritted, tilting his head toward the P.O.S. Ford.</p><p>Erik could run again. He obligingly drifted closer to what he guessed was the getaway vehicle, but with 9 mm focused on the van, he could run. Leave this for good and start over. But then he made the same mistake as 9 mm—he watched T’Challa fight.</p><p>Even dressed like a city kid with his face covered, he moved in a way Erik instantly recognized and hadn’t seen since the end of his coup. If any of these CIA spooks put that together, too, the diplomatic incident with Wakanda would go just a little differently. </p><p>Then the moment for escape had passed him by. He’d let it pass. In the last few seconds before T’Challa, 9 mm, and the third who could only be Okoye secured the van and left it, Erik—well, he enjoyed this display of <i>not yours, mine</i> a little more than he thought he would.</p><p>Then 9 mm was hauling himself into the driver’s seat, Okoye gave him the look of death all the way into the passenger seat, and T’Challa said quietly, “Let’s go.” He climbed into the back, expecting Erik to follow. And he did.</p><p>*</p><p>9 mm was CIA—T’Challa had called him when Erik ran—and also, strangely, named Ross. Apparently Erik had shot him in Seoul. </p><p>“Feels a little weird, to be honest, risking my career for the guy who mortally wounded me and almost took over your country,” Ross said, glancing in the rearview mirror at Erik, then at T’Challa.</p><p>Okoye made a noise of agreement as she stripped out of her hoodie in the front seat. Underneath she wore a standard-issue tactical vest, which she unhooked and slid over her head with a look of disgust. Those things were nowhere near as strong as her Dora Milaje armor.</p><p>“Thank you again,” T’Challa said to Ross. “Shuri will provide your cover if anyone asks.” He wore a vest like Okoye’s, and the thought of him throwing himself into that van without his Panther armor spiked Erik’s heartrate. But what would have happened if the Black Panther had shown up to steal Erik out of US custody, consort or no? In this case, no. Not-even-consort. </p><p>Erik himself still hadn’t said a word. And he couldn’t seem to tear his eyes away from T’Challa’s bare torso either. They’d seen each other naked—they’d fucked. But seeing him stripped to the waist in the backseat of this car that smelled like old weed put him right back in that waterfall, challenging him for the throne. It struck him that he hadn’t seen T’Challa this unarmed since that day. And that included the heat they’d pushed together.</p><p>“Are you all right?” T’Challa asked him, voice soft as though either of them could forget the audience in the front seat. </p><p>Erik jerked his eyes up. “I’m good,” he answered. And for no reason he could identify right then, he added, “Ross, the other one, wanted me to spy for him. Was gonna just let me go back to Wakanda with you to spy for him.”</p><p>T’Challa’s mouth flattened. “I know. I heard him.”</p><p>“How—” The answer hit him the moment he opened his mouth, but not before Okoye jumped down his throat.</p><p>“Every piece of your clothing has a listening device because no one trusts you not to do something horrible,” she snapped. “Obviously.”</p><p>“Smart,” Ross said as he pulled up to a stop sign, signaled, and turned right.</p><p>T’Challa’s mouth twitched into more of a smile. </p><p>Erik couldn’t really be offended either. “Fair,” he said. “So you heard me turn him down.”</p><p>“Okoye would not let me come after you until you turned him down.” He looked Erik in the eye, and Erik felt the truth behind those words. T’Challa had wanted to come for him.</p><p>Erik was about to say, <i>That’s the smartest thing you’ve done in weeks,</i> but he didn’t actually want an audience for that. He wanted to shove T’Challa back against the car door. He wanted to hear him suck in a short breath at the cold glass against his bare back. He wanted—</p><p>“We will talk when we’re in the air,” T’Challa said, looking away. And maybe his cousin wasn’t as foolish has Erik had thought. That was three sensible ideas in a row.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>*</p><p>For a country that until this week had stayed out of international affairs, Wakanda had machines of war and no shortage of them. The Talon Fighter could fuck up a small city in under a minute, and it had a royal bunk where T’Challa could rest his kingly head on international flights. There wasn’t really room for two, but they squeezed in. Where the hell else were they supposed to go with Okoye and Shuri making dagger-eyes at him?</p><p>“They’re never gonna trust me.”</p><p>T’Challa shrugged, and with his Panther necklace resting against his collar once more, Erik breathed easier. He couldn’t be responsible for that waste of a life. And now he wouldn’t. “You keep doing things they find untrustworthy,” T’Challa said. “But when you say things like that, you imply a length of time over which they may or may not come to trust you.”</p><p>Erik realized his mistake and the trap T’Challa had set for him, but that didn’t mean he had to go any further into it. Not unless he wanted to.</p><p>Taking the only seat in the room, Erik dropped onto the bunk. “Look, straight up, cousin—what do you want outta this? What do you want from me? ‘Cause photo-ops for your cultural center ain’t it.” He looked up—and found T’Challa’s brows drawn together, and the way he was standing… shit, was he guilty? “But you already knew that,” Erik said. “’Cause you’re not a complete idiot.”</p><p>T’Challa’s mouth twitched. “Not completely, no.”</p><p>Then he turned and sat next to Erik, the bed only big enough for about a fist’s distance between them. “I wanted… I wanted there to be something I could do for you. Something I could give you.”</p><p>“Yeah, you said that before. But this center is a present for you, not me.” Erik was gratified to see T’Challa wince. “I know you think you can do good things for the community. Work inside the system, empower the leaders of tomorrow, whatever. But I spent my whole life in it. There’s no fixin’ it.”</p><p>“I understand,” T’Challa said shortly. </p><p>“No. You don’t. You don’t know the first fucking thing.” </p><p>“You’re right.” An edge of impatience colored T’Challa’s voice, which only made Erik angrier. </p><p>“And I don’t give a fuck about this guilt you’re carryin’, either. You can’t make it right. Certainly not with that.” He gestured back the way they’d come, California long disappeared behind the horizon.</p><p>“You asked me what I wanted from you, yet you will not listen to my answer. Will you <i>please</i> let me finish?”</p><p>Erik’s mouth twitched. Fuck, he liked it when T’Challa got angry. He gestured for his cousin to speak. </p><p>T’Challa nodded and seemed to gather himself. “The thing I want you to understand, which I should have said much better and sooner, is that I don’t want you to be anyone other than yourself.” Erik’s eyebrows shot up, and T’Challa smiled slightly. “I wanted the cultural center to be for you because—because what I want from you is so much.”</p><p>“What do you mean?” Erik asked, suspicion creeping in. </p><p>“I told you I wanted to make things right—yes, because my father did wrong by you, but also because <i>you</i> are right about so much. Not—” He held up his hand to ward off an interruption. “Not about everything. Wakanda will not escalate an arms race. But…” He met Erik’s eyes and lifted his chin. “As we make our presence known around the world, I need someone close to me who understands the world as I do not yet.”</p><p>Erik shook his head, a quick twitch of denial. “I already told you, your War Dogs know what’s up. Nakia can set your dumb ass straight—I don’t want that job.”</p><p>“She has no interest in ruling.” T’Challa smirked at him. “I happen to know you do.”</p><p>Erik opened his mouth, but since T’Challa was absolutely right about that, he closed it.</p><p>“In answer to your question, I want—” T’Challa looked him up and down. “I want your influence and your advice. And for you to have mine in return. I could not find another who understands what we are up against better than you.”</p><p>“You want me to be your War Dog,” Erik finally said. </p><p>“Yes, but more than that. I want you by my side in this.”</p><p>“I haven’t been anywhere near your side since we didn’t bond that first time. I’m the ‘responsibility’ you keep miles away from the throne room when anybody else is in it.” He hadn’t expected that to hurt, but it had. </p><p>T’Challa’s lips pressed together, and he looked away. “I think you can see that I have to take responsibility for the risk of bringing you into this. But you’re right that I have not treated you fairly—I have not allowed you close to me, nor have I sought your advice, because I have been afraid.”</p><p>Erik narrowed his eyes. “This isn’t about your guilt at all, is it.”</p><p>T’Challa shook his head. “You are—valuable to this family, and I would use your particular skillset for the good of our people, if you will agree to that. If you will have me.” He got that shifty look about him again. “I should have discussed this with you earlier, and I’m sorry—"</p><p>“You’re out of your mind,” Erik blurted. “I stabbed you and threw you over a waterfall.”</p><p>For some reason, this relaxed T’Challa’s shoulders. “That was before you got to know me.” His teeth flashed in a grin, and Erik couldn’t help the reflexive laugh that burst out of him.</p><p>“I could kill you in your sleep,” he said, “and you wanna ‘use me for my particular skillset.’”</p><p>“Yes, but if you do that, it would be murder, and you would not be made king after. Not to mention, I do not think that you want me dead.” T’Challa gave him that smug smile that Erik still mostly hated.</p><p>“And what makes you think that?” Erik asked with genuine curiosity. He couldn’t have explained it himself, in that moment.</p><p>T’Challa’s gaze dropped to his mouth. “Since I pulled you out of that van, we kindled our own heat. Without chemical assistance.”</p><p>Which neatly and obviously explained Erik’s candid streak of the last few hours, as well as the low-grade fever and hard-on he’d had since T’Challa had stripped out of that tac vest. “Shit,” he said. “Well, look at us.”</p><p>T’Challa’s nostrils flared as he inhaled sharply. “You should know,” he said, “heats that come on naturally—”</p><p>“We’re gonna bond,” Erik finished. It was a virtual certainty. “Then I really won’t want to kill you.” Not without mutilating himself in the process.</p><p>“What do you think, cousin?” T’Challa asked. “It is your choice, to accept this—this partnership or not. I took your death from you. I will not take this without your consent.”</p><p>Erik considered that with what little clarity the early stages of heat afforded him. “I already told you I was in,” he said. “You know what I want. You really want in on all this too?” </p><p>He stripped out of his shirt, revealing the lines and lines of his scars. All the killing and death that traveled with him. It had been in service to his mission and to a government that exploited and feared him, while claiming to value him. Even if he left that government behind and his mission was…altered slightly, that purpose had guided his entire life since his dad died. It had made him. But had it made him incapable of this? </p><p>If he and T’Challa had triggered this thing themselves, that was probably his answer. But binding himself to another required more than chemistry. A bond needed trust and something deeper that walked and talked a lot like love. Could Erik love the person who’d taken everything from him?</p><p>Only, T’Challa hadn’t. Wakanda had carved out so much of what Erik had relied on for his truth and his identity. It’d left behind a hole that he’d filled with a mission, yes, but also vengeance. Was his satisfied? Was the bind itself his vengeance?</p><p>T’Challa still hadn’t answered him, and while there’d be a kind of twisted justice in tying the king to him out of dedication to mission over all else, he didn’t actually want that. He didn’t want just that. He wanted T’Challa to want him. Whatever vengeance he had left to take would be all the sweeter for it.</p><p>“I would have you just as you are,” T’Challa said formally, “with the hope that we will become better versions of ourselves together.” </p><p>“Shit,” Erik said with a smirk. “You talk like that to all the girls?”</p><p>“No,” T’Challa answered, and Erik didn’t mind that smug look so much right then. The smile that broke across T’Challa’s face tugged at Erik’s gut, full of humor and optimism. He’d have said it was unearned and ignorant but, right then, it wasn’t.</p><p>“Good.” He shifted on the bunk, leaning his back against the side of the small alcove. “Then let’s do this thing.”</p><p>*</p><p>When they got down to skin, Erik tried to roll T’Challa under him like he had for the first heat they pushed, that same instinct to take and possess and get <i>in</i> driving him to roughness. He was rough—anyone who didn’t know that or couldn’t handle it didn’t handle him.</p><p>Except then T’Challa said, “Will you not look me in the eye for this?”</p><p>And like hell would Erik let T’Challa think he was a coward, so they pressed against the side of the bunk and looked each other right in the face. Erik decided he might get a little obsessed with fucking like this. The intensity of it distracted him just enough that T’Challa managed to get in him first, quick fingers and those serious eyes holding Erik in place until he was breached and there was no point going back. He straddled T’Challa’s legs and boxed him in with hands braced on either side of his head and shuddered as T’Challa breathed harshly against his chest and fucked up into him. The stretch and burn stole his breath, exactly the kind of too-much he lived for.</p><p>He’d never done a heat this way, always preferred the driver’s seat, but he didn’t exactly feel out of control either. He looked his cousin in the eyes and felt that same tipping sensation from their first heat, like gravity would take him down and down if he let it.</p><p>“I’m sorry I kept us from bonding the last time we tried,” T’Challa said, biting kisses into Erik’s collarbone.</p><p>“What?” Erik managed. </p><p>“I blamed myself and treated you shamefully after.”</p><p>“Yeah, I blamed you for that, too,” he answered. Angling his hips a little differently, he rocked back on T’Challa’s dick, and they both swore in different languages. </p><p>T’Challa tightened his grip on Erik’s waist. He looked up with earnest eyes, his pupils blown so wide, Erik could just make out the ring of dark brown around them. “I was unsure of you, but I was even more unsure of myself—how I could ask for what I wanted from you.”</p><p>T’Challa’s avoidance after that first heat had cut deeper than Erik wanted to admit, but when T’Challa got a hand on him now, stroking him off in time with his thrusts, he admitted it all anyway. “I thought there was no way I’d be able to do this. You’d figure that out, and I’d be done for real.”</p><p>Going still, T’Challa searched his face. “What do you mean?”</p><p>Erik groaned in frustration—both at his heat-driven honesty and at T’Challa for stopping. “This,” he said. “I didn’t think I could do this.” Had he been able to find the words, he would have spilled them. Luckily, they eluded him. The prospect of T’Challa all up in his head and his feelings was fucking terrifying to confront. Would that be his vengeance? Forcing the ugly tangle of his emotions on his cousin, forcing him to live with it?</p><p>“Fuck, aren’t you the least bit fucked up about this?” he blurted.</p><p>T’Challa’s expression eased. “I believe that’s what I have been trying to tell you.” He slid his arms more tightly around Erik’s waist and ducked his head to mouth and bite at his nipple. Erik’s nerve endings lit up all down the backs of his arms, and his body clenched tight. </p><p>“I wish you’d’a just said what you wanted before.” Erik also wished he could shut the fuck up and finish this. </p><p>T’Challa groaned. “I thought you would feel used. I thought the Oakland center would help,” he said. “I was wrong.”</p><p>Erik shrugged and shook his head. “I was starting to worry there was nothing in your head but optimism. But we’ve both got plans.” He raised himself up onto his knees, the drag of T’Challa’s cock sending a shiver along his spine. T’Challa arched his hips and met him, crying out at the crest. “I like plans. I like people with plans.”</p><p>They rocked together and apart, and maybe it was the altitude, but more likely it was the organic heat that finally stole the thread of Erik’s thinking, stopped him from rambling any more about plans, and sent them both rocketing over the edge together, that first orgasm drawing them into a protracted release that synchronized breath and heartbeat. T’Challa buried himself and rocked in with a gentle rhythm, lifting Erik in his lap and filling him.</p><p>Erik, for the length of a heartbeat, felt that primordial instinct and wished he could actually get knocked up from this. But the impulse passed just as quickly, and thank fuck, he was too wiped to let it slip out of his mouth.</p><p>Though—he <i>felt</i> T’Challa’s amusement, warm and close and in his fucking head, which likely meant he hadn’t needed to let any of it slip for T’Challa to know it.</p><p>He leaned back to look T’Challa in the eye, and narrowed his expression. “That was just the heat talkin’,” he said.</p><p>“I understand.”</p><p>“If you’re workin’ on any crazy shit in that medical center dungeon, I ain’t havin’ any part of it.”</p><p>“We’re not,” T’Challa assured him, mouth curling in a smile. “But, noted.”</p><p>Erik shifted and hissed at the weight of T’Challa still in him, hard and hot. “Good,” he said. “Come on, on your back.” Body greedily reaching for more pleasure, more closeness, more, more, and more, he shoved his cousin’s shoulder. T’Challa obligingly shifted along the curve of the alcove, and they rearranged themselves so Erik straddled him, T’Challa lying flat beneath him. Leaning down, he took a rough kiss and said, grinning against T’Challa’s mouth, “Imma ride you into the sunset, majesty.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I am deeply attached to the idea of the royal family including Erik as the ever-useful Murder Cousin. Always good to have one of those around.</p><p>Full credit goes to Seinmit for the patio furniture image/metaphor. A perfect way to capture Erik's motivation. Thank you.</p><p>Come say hi on <a href="https://itstartledme.tumblr.com/">tumblr!</a></p></blockquote></div></div>
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